Two Wrongs
by Beaglicious
Summary: Two wrongs never made a right, and more specifically, two dead patients didn’t make it okay for her to sleep with Simon on Ray’s birthday. Spoilers for 15x12, Dream Runner. Neela-centric, RN angst, Simon-Neela.


Two Wrongs

"_But to choose inaction is in and of itself action, isn't it?" - Ned, patient transport specialist, Buddhist, omnivore_

A/N: Written as if Ray's 5 am call in 15x12, Dream Runner, never happened. I took some liberties with the story line, pulling out parts from all 3 versions of Neela's dream.

Disclaimer: ER and its characters are not mine and have been borrowed without permission.

Neela knew that it was silly to expect a call from Ray, but that didn't stop her from wishing it was him who woke her just after 5 am. Maybe if "she" hadn't sent him that text message a week previous, telling him that she was thinking about him, and maybe if he hadn't responded in kind, then she wouldn't have had anything to hope for. Maybe if today weren't his birthday (and there was no one she knew who loved birthdays more than Ray Barnett), then she wouldn't be assuming it was him calling. And most of all, maybe if she hadn't spent the few precious hours of sleep she'd managed to catch in the on-call room dreaming about him, then she wouldn't have answered the phone with a sleepy "Ray." But all those things had happened, and so Neela was rudely jolted awake when the caller responded, "Ray? Who's Ray? Is this Neela? Dr. Rasgotra?"

Funny, she could have sworn the caller id had said Ray Barnett. Maybe she'd messed up something in her iPhone again. She'd have Ana take another look at it this morning. This time, however, she wouldn't be so naïve as to leave Ana alone with her phone. God knows what she'd text Ray and or Simon if given half a chance.

Ana thought it was awesome that Neela had two "boyfriends". Neela didn't think it was awesome at all, especially since neither Ray nor Simon were, or ever had been, her boyfriend. There had been a chance (multiple chances, actually, all of which she had sabotaged) with both of them, but those doors had long since closed. Ray had some apparently fabulous girlfriend who had drug him home to Georgia for Thanksgiving to show off to her parents, and Simon was seeing some girl and claimed it was getting serious. Neela hadn't asked either man for details since, and surprisingly, the usually gregarious men had both remained mute on the subject.

"Who is this?" Neela demanded, her tone sour. She had less than two hours to go until she was off call, and she had hoped to spend those last two hours sleeping. She didn't need to go into interviews for attending positions at the trauma conference with circles under her eyes and a post-call addled brain.

"It's Mary, your intern? I think you need to come down here and check on your sickle cell patient. She's not doing so well, and Lucien's in there talking surgery with her mom. I know she's special to you, so I thought…"

Neela had hung up the phone and was running before Mary could finish talking. She'd have to remember to thank her later today and apologize for being so rude, not that interns expected sunny doctors after a night on call. Still, Neela needed a good recommendation from this intern, especially after the disaster with Dave. If she wanted an attending position at County, she had to be at least a half-decent teacher and mentor. Neela was secretly hoping that Lucien would tell her this morning not to even bother going to the trauma conference (after all, he was the one who had set up all these interviews for her in the first place), that he'd managed to find a way around the current hiring freeze at County and get her an attending position. _Yeah, right,_ she thought. She was expecting that from Lucien even less than she was expecting a call from Ray, and she certainly wasn't about to ask him to pull strings at County on her behalf.

***

She arrived just in time to find Ana's mom nodding in agreement with whatever Lucien was saying. Neela felt a rare surge of irritation towards her mentor. Ana was her patient, and she was the surgeon on call.

She glared at him over Ana's head, then followed him out of the room, ready to blast him. But when Lucien turned to her, asking for her opinion, Neela froze_. Lucien's probably right,_ she told herself. _ After all, he's been doing this for a lot longer than you have. He's your attending. It's his prerogative to overrule you._

"Well?" Lucien demanded as she stammered.

_It's vancomycin-resistant enterococcus. Just which antibiotic were you planning on treating her with anyways? Synercid? That's going to require an order from an Infectious Disease attending. How long do you think it will take to get that?_

"You're probably right," she said, lowering her eyes to the floor in defeat. "I was hoping the cultures wouldn't come back VRE, but now that they have, IV antibiotics no longer make sense. Debridement, or in this case, removal of the infected organ, is protocol for intra-abdominal VRE infections."

"Up to date as always on your reading, I see." Lucien smiled. Neela didn't smile back.

"OR in 10," he told her.

***

She ran downstairs to the ER, anxious to retrieve her stethoscope before it walked off. If she waited until shift change, she'd never see it again. Of course, it was expecting too much that she would find both her stethoscope and escape the ER without being spotted. Sure enough, she exited the lounge just to walk right into an arriving trauma, and Tony grabbed her hand and tugged her along even as she begged him to page the intern.

Anxious to get back to Ana, Neela ran a quick assessment of the patient. It wasn't easy, as Banfield and Morris seemed to be engaged in an especially aggressive difference of opinion, and Tony was too busy worrying about non-existent compartment syndrome to be of any help. Neela understood that they were 11 hours into a 12-hour overnight shift that was threatening to stretch to 15 or 16 hours, but honestly, couldn't they at least try to maintain some civility? The glares coming from both Banfield and Morris were liable to kill her in the crossfire.

"It's not surgical at this point," she declared, not particularly caring if any of them were listening to her. "There's seems no bleeding in the belly." She contemplated asking them to recheck the crit, then shrugged away the thought. There were enough opinions flying around without adding hers to the mix, and she definitely didn't want to be forced to choose sides. Besides, they were all intelligent doctors, when they weren't being so pig-headed. Someone was likely to suggest it just to aggravate the other two.

She disappeared upstairs to check on Ana before they could stop her.

***

Ana was coding on the table by the time she reached the OR. Neela pushed her way to the table and took over compressions. The nurse she'd pushed out of the way ran to answer the ringing phone.

"They need a surgeon in the ER."

"Forget it," she yelled. "Ana, stay with us!"

"Go, Neela," Lucien told her.

Neela argued with him for a few minutes longer, but as her arms tired from compressions, she knew she was out of excuses. She'd break her promise to Ana to stay, but she couldn't ignore the ER's needs either.

Neela raced down to the ER, only to learn that the dream-runner patient she'd seen earlier had gone up to CT. Neela dashed back up the stairs she'd just descended and found herself in a scene eerily similar to the one she'd just left. She watched helplessly as Morris shocked the patient over and over again, until Banfield muttered, "This is over," and ripped off her gloves. This time, Morris didn't argue with her.

Neela's cell phone rang then, cutting through the silence. She grabbed at the phone, hoping it was Ray, sighing with despair when she found it was upstairs calling to say that Ana too was gone.

***

Neela returned to the surgeon's lounge and showered and dressed for her interviews with little enthusiasm. By this point, she'd already missed the interviews with Yale and Cornell. Her only hope was that she would make it in time to salvage the last few minutes of her interview with Duke, and that was only if she caught a lucky break on the L.

She trotted out down the ambulance bay, her attention more focused on finding her phone in her overstuffed purse than on where she was going. After this morning, she very much needed a friend to confide in, and too bad for Ray if it was his birthday. She needed his understanding more right now that he needed her false excitement.

After narrowly avoiding a run-in with the dumpster, she found her phone, but in her excitement she used too much force, and the phone shot from her hands and out onto the concrete, narrowly missing a large puddle.

_Damnit. Ray was right. I have absolutely no business carrying around a phone this expensive._

Neela bent down to reach for her phone at the same time that a larger hand closed over it. She looked up to find a tanned and relaxed Simon Brenner (was he already due back from Australia?) smiling winsomely at her.

"Where are you off to in such a hurry, Dr. Rasgotra?" he teased.

"Attending interviews," she murmured, accepting the phone back. Her pulse felt thready and her face flushed. _Get a grip, Neela._

"Where at?"

"The Roselyn Hotel."

"You're taking the L?"

"I don't have a car, Simon."

"You'll never make it in time."

She shrugged, suppressing the urge to scream. Had he really just made her blush a few minutes ago? Now she was ready to strangle him.

"I've already missed most of them already," she said.

"But you still have some left, right?"

"Duke," Neela admitted, leaving out that it was the last place on earth she wanted to end up. Not only was she not interested in their program, but also her irrational side kept saying that North Carolina bordered Georgia, and Georgia was where Ray's fabulous girlfriend's family was. With the way her luck was going, Ray would probably insist that the three of them spend next Thanksgiving together.

Simon was eyeing Archie's bike. "Can we borrow it?" he asked, reaching back to grab Neela's hand. _This is so not a good idea_, she thought. But Simon's hand was warm, and he was the closest thing she had to a friend at the moment. And she really did need to make at least one interview. Lucien would really flip if she ditched the conference altogether.

When Archie agreed to loan out his bike, Simon looked back at Neela and smiled. "Need some help with your helmet?" He was placing it on her head before she could agree or disagree, and Neela found herself blushing again when the back of his hand brushed across her cheek. She knew it wasn't an accident. _Guess that girlfriend wasn't as serious as he let on. I wonder if his idea of serious is letting her stay over two nights in a row._

On the ride to the hotel, it became obvious to Neela that whatever had been going on between Simon and his girlfriend was long since over. Neela didn't ask, didn't want details. It would be her luck that the one man who she wanted to break up with his girlfriend hadn't, and the one that she had been pleased about having one would. For some reason, Simon's increased attentions only made her miss Ray that much more. She discretely checked her phone as she was climbing off the bike. No missed calls. _Damn._

She needed to run if she was ever going to make her appointment with Duke, but Simon wasn't ready to let her go yet. He was rambling on about missing Chicago, although she was only half-listening. At least she was until he said, "There is a certain surgeon. I couldn't seem to get her out of my head."

_Oh. I guess he means me._

She was blushing again, and decided it was kind of nice.

Very nice, she amended when he took her hand and leaned his forehead against hers. Very nice indeed. Simon certainly could be charming when he wanted to, and he knew it. After all, his charm was why Banfield had put him in charge of securing speakers for grand rounds. Or so he claimed.

_Just like Ray,_ she reminded herself, remembering back to his October visit, when he also had rested his forehead against hers. A perfect moment, she'd thought at the time. A perfect moment that the man whose blue eyes now bored into her own darker ones had ruined.

_This is no time to be comparing those two. Just thank Simon for the ride and get on into your interview like a good girl._

But Neela wasn't in the mood to play good girl any longer this morning. She'd done that with Ana and the dream-runner and now they were both dead. Unusually emboldened, Neela turned back to Simon and nudged him gently. "Simon? I missed you too… a little." She hadn't missed him the way she missed Ray, but she was surprised to realize that she had, indeed, missed him a little.

"I'll wait for you," he told her.

"Don't bother," she yelled over her shoulder as she broke into a run. But she knew he would, and secretly, she was pleased. It would be good to have a friend to confide in after she blew her Duke interview. She pushed away the niggling thought that Simon wasn't really interested in being friends with her.

Still, when Dr. Corday escorted her down to the lobby and Neela saw that Simon was indeed waiting, she couldn't help but smile, even as her internal monologue warned her that Ray would have waited too. And when Simon held up the bright yellow room key and bit his lower lip before offering her a small smile, Neela found she couldn't say no.

It had been a day of passive indecisiveness on her part, and although each of her inactions had resulted in disastrous consequences, she was so exhausted that it was easier for her to allow Simon to take her hand and pull her onto the elevator than it was to say no. Or so she told herself. After all, what was one wrong personal decision after a day full of piss-poor professional ones?

Her conscience caught up with her somewhere between floors 7 and 8, so when they stepped off the elevator Neela shooed Simon off and promised to join him in a moment. "I just need to check on a patient," she explained. _Yeah, right…_

"Don't make me come back for you," Simon warned as his mouth curled up in a smile. He leaned in and planted an intense kiss on her lips that left her with no doubts as to his intentions before heading down the hall.

As Neela dialed Ray's number and began pacing in a small circle, she squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated on willing him to pick up the phone. So much depended on this one call…

"_You've reached the voicemail of Ray Barnett. Please leave a message and I'll return your call as soon as possible."_

Neela pulled the phone away and frowned. Since when had Ray had such a professional voicemail message? She cringed as she thought about the original compositions that Ray had included on the answering machine message at their old apartment.

The beep brought Neela back in focus, although she faltered at first. "Uh, hi, Ray…. this is Neela. Listen, I know it's your birthday and I was hoping to tell you this in person but…"

_But what?_ Neela was out of answers and out of time. Simon was down at the end of the hall waving at her. Why, oh why hadn't Ray picked up his phone? She was apparently incapable of saving herself, and was looking for him to do what she couldn't, only he wasn't available.

Neela rushed through the rest of her message, suddenly anxious for it to end. "Happy Birthday, Ray. You're 30. Can you believe it? We're supposed to be all grown-up now."

She hung up the phone, tried to turn it off, and failing, gave up and tossed it back in her purse. She looked up to find Simon coming towards her. "Everything ok?" he asked.

"Yeah, sure," she said as he reached her, wrapping his arms around her waist and nuzzling her neck.

"Think you can spare some time for me?" More nuzzling.

"I suppose," she murmured, forcing a brilliant smile to her face.

***

His call came as she was buttoning up her blouse. Neela knew better than to lunge across the bed for her phone, but she did use the missed call as an excuse to get back to the hospital and away from Simon. She had the phone to her ear before she was out the door.

"_Hey, Roomie! I knew you wouldn't forget my birthday! We were, um…well, Brett and all the guys from my old band came into town, and we're all at a bar, so…you know how it goes, right? Anyways, call me back."_ She could hear the background noise crescendo, and then stop abruptly. Ray must have stepped outside.

"_I've been thinking about you a lot recently. Actually, I…. well, I miss you, Roomie. You know you're always welcome to visit, right?"_ And then there were more crashing sounds, Brett's booming voice in the background, Ray's laugh. Her heart ached with regret. Why had she let him walk out her door? More importantly, why didn't she get on a flight to Baton Rouge?

_Because that would require you to actually make a decision, to do something for yourself instead of just letting things happen to you. And you've certainly demonstrated today just how incapable you are of making any kind of decision when it matters._

"_I really gotta go. But call me back, ok?"_

Neela sighed and slumped against the wall. Just once today she had wanted to make the right decision. Two wrongs never made a right, and more specifically, two dead patients didn't make it okay for her to sleep with Simon on Ray's birthday. But with the wrong man naked in a rumpled bed just down the hall, Neela knew it was no longer a question of whether she had made the right decision or the wrong one. It was whether she had made one at all.

The End


End file.
